Illinois lawmakers now banned from using public funds for harassment hush money

Cole Lauterback Illinois News Network

Published
2:43 pm CDT, Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill into law making it illegal for Illinois lawmakers to silence sexual harassment victims with taxpayer money.

Even though the bill’s sponsor isn’t aware of it happening, given Springfield’s secretive nature, he said it’s best to get ahead of it.

State Rep. David McSweeney’s bill is straightforward. It says no public funds “shall be paid to any person in exchange for his or her silence or inaction related to an allegation or investigation of sexual harassment.”

With news coming out that members of Congress had done this, McSweeney said laws need to be in place to protect Illinoisans’ taxpayer money from any type of similar behavior.

“As we saw in Congress, taxpayer money should not be used to silence sexual harassment claims,” he said.

Last year, news reports out of Capitol Hill showed since 1997, Congress paid out more than $17 million from a taxpayer fund to settle claims against members of Congress.

A number of anonymous allegations of misbehavior by Illinois lawmakers were highlighted in an open letter last October, but only a couple have been publicly named.

The punishment for breaking this law would be up to the state’s attorney general.

Like Congress, McSweeney said Illinois lawmakers have a lot of leeway on operating funds in their districts.

“There’s a lot of member discretion around the funds made available for district offices,” he said. “We wanted to make explicitly sure that none of that money can be used in the future to silence harassment claims.”

Cole Lauterbach reports on Illinois government and statewide issues for INN. Lauterbach has managed and produced shows for news/talk radio stations in both Bloomington/Normal and Peoria, and created award-winning programs for Comcast SportsNet Chicago.